Editorial: U.S. air traffic control system in serious need of reform

Associated Press photoAn air traffic controller drinks a cup of coffee while working in a terminal radar approach control room Monday at the Atlanta TRACON in Peachtree City, Ga.

Perhaps there’s a Do Not Disturb sign posted on the door at many air traffic control offices. After all, the folks inside might well be sleeping. Or watching a movie.

Some are doubtless actually doing their job, but enough are up to something else – or nothing at all – to raise some real and serious concerns.

When the news broke a few weeks back about the lone air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan National Airport dozing off for more than half an hour, forcing two planes to land without assistance from anyone on the ground, it was greeted as a very scary anomaly.

Surely the Federal Aviation Administration was not routinely staffing control towers at major airports with just a single sleepy soul. But then there were reports of another, and another, and another air traffic controller sleeping at the console. These were followed by the story of a controller who was watching a movie while he was supposed to be monitoring the airplanes.

And then there was the incident involving a flight carrying Michelle Obama. That controller was apparently only metaphorically asleep at the switch, but his inattentiveness brought the first lady’s plane dangerously close to another on the ground.

All of these have provided a trove of materials for editorial cartoonists and late-night talk-show hosts. It’s understandable, of course. But when you think about any of this for more than a second, for the time it takes a jetliner to get into trouble, the joke is over.

The system is broken. Badly. Deeply. Seriously. Dangerously. Before something tragic happens, steps have got to be taken to see that it works again.

Keeping those on the job awake – and away from the movies – would be a good start. Just as there are co-pilots aloft, perhaps there should be co-controllers on the ground.